Persistence of Memory

Chapter 1 - Meeting Brian Kinney

12 years later...

Late January 2018...

"Hey, Sunny, wait up!" Gus saw his girlfriend - a tiny slip of a girl and possessor of a wild mane of red, cork-screw curls, and brilliant green eyes - at the end of the courtyard, walking towards the exit of their high school campus. She turned around at the sound of his voice and stopped to wait for him with a happy smile on her face as he ran full out towards her. They hugged, kissed and stood there lightly intertwined, oblivious of the vicious cold and the biting wind.

"How was gym class?" he asked about her last course of the day.

"Hateful, as always. I like exercise, but not at someone's command and not for a grade. I'm lucky that I am fairly athletic. It's just my luck to have transferred to a school in my senior year that requires P.E. class every damn semester. How was bio?"

"Boring, as usual. Hopefully, I'll pass the AP exam and won't have to deal with this bullshit in college. Listen, are you listening? I was thinking of taking you to my father's, introducing you to the old man. What do you think?"

"We've been officially dating for two weeks; don't you think it's a bit early to meet the parents?" she asked playfully.

"I had to meet both of yours when I took you out on our first date - at the same time, no less. I was given the third degree about my entire life and then your father asked me if I'd be interested in seeing his gun collection sometime soon!"

Sunny burst out in a peal of laughter at that pronouncement. "Gus, you do realize that my Dad was just kidding, right? My father is a staunch democrat whose biggest soapbox is the lack of gun control in this country. He has never even held a gun, let alone owned an entire collection! It was his sweet, over-protective and completely unnecessary way of keeping you on the 'straight-and-narrow', as it were, on our very first date."

"Lovely man, your father." Gus groused, "I was afraid to fucking kiss you good night that evening!"

Sunny laughed again and standing on her tip-toes kissed him full on the mouth. "I'm glad you did, despite your fear."

"Well, I thought your kiss would be worth dying for," he said, grinning.

"Aww, Gus. I live for that kind of romantic bullshit!" she said with a mock-swoon.

"So, my Dad, you wanna meet him?" Gus returned to the subject at hand.

"Hell, yes! After meeting some of your family at the diner the other day, I am more than ready to meet the legend. When?"

"I'm thinking now. He's working from home today, so I thought we'd go to Britin, stay for dinner. I'll show you the stables. The horses are especially eager to meet you."

"Are they really? Well then, we can't keep the horses waiting. I'll call my folks, let them know I'll be having dinner with you."

~*~*~*~

They walked to Gus's Jeep hand in hand, smiling and discussing the day's events. On the way to Britin, Sunny, suddenly worried, asked, "He knows about me, right? Your Dad."

"Yeah, I told him I have a girlfriend."

"When?"

Gus thought for a minute and then answered with a shrug, "Around Christmas, actually."

"Christmas?" She gasped. "But we weren't even dating yet at Christmas!"

"Yet, being the operative word. I fully planned on asking you out after the holidays." He smirked.

"Wow! Confident much, are we?" she asked, one perfectly shaped eyebrow raised in question. "Asking me out on a date didn't guarantee that I would become your girlfriend."

"Oh, come on, Sunny. I knew you wouldn't be able to resist me," he joked, but then added a bit more seriously, "I knew you wanted to go out with me months ago, ever since you moved to the Pitts in August."

"Why didn't you ask me out earlier then, if you were so bloody confident?" Sunny was somewhat perturbed.

"You just broke up with that asshole boyfriend of yours from back home. I wanted to give you plenty of time to get over that relationship, so that I wouldn't end up being just your random rebound boy," Gus answered honestly.

"Just my random rebound boy? Gus, you could never be just random anything! As far as 'rebound boy' goes, who says you aren't?" she teased, her good humor restored.

"I, Gus Peterson-Kinney, say that, because you soooo care about me, Sunny North!" he said with conviction as they pulled up the driveway of a gorgeous Tudor style house and parked by the front door.

As soon as they walked in, Gus shouted at the top of his lungs.

"Yo, Dad, we're here! Marco!"

"Polo!" came a reply from somewhere down the hall. "I'm in the office, Sonnyboy. Come on in!"

~*~*~*~

They walked into a spacious room, completely outfitted as a home office, with state of the art electronics and expensive leather furniture. The room was dominated by a huge mahogany desk that was surprisingly free of clutter, considering that every other available surface in the office was covered with notebooks, binders, papers, mock-ups and boards for various ad campaigns.

When the man in question stood up and walked around the desk to greet them, Sunny did a classic double take – it was like looking 30 years into Gus's future. When she met Gus's mother, Lindsay, a week ago, she thought that Gus had a slight resemblance to her. Now, however, she was convinced that it was just a trick of the light or her imagination, because Gus was the spitting image of his dad, minus a few stray gray hairs at the temples and relatively faint wrinkles around his eyes. At 46, almost 47, Brian Kinney looked remarkably young and most people would be surprised to find out that he was even a day over 39. When the two hugged and then stood side-by-side looking at her, the resemblance was almost eerie – from the hair, to the facial features, to the exact same stance and the identical expression on their faces. Her jaw hit the floor and she said, "Good lord, you could be twins!” not realizing it was uttered out loud.

Both men laughed, and then Gus walked towards her, put his hand on the small of her back and turning towards his dad said proudly, "Dad, this is my girlfriend, Sunny North."

Brian shook her hand and with one eyebrow lifted quizzically asked, "Sunny? That's an unusual name."

"It's a nickname, actually. Everyone in my family calls me that," she answered. Her smile lit up her face and her green eyes twinkled in amusement. Suddenly, Brian knew exactly why she was bestowed with such a nickname – he knew of someone else who got a similar moniker because of a dazzling, radiant face.

"Actually, my name's Rowena, Rowena Marie North. Everyone outside my family calls me Rae, but Gus insists on using Sunny. Says I make him think of..."

"Sunshine," all three said in unison. Gus and Rae laughed, while Brian smiled somewhat wistfully.

"It's nice to meet you, Mr. Kinney."

"Brian. You too, Rae. You are welcome here anytime. So, dinner. Are we ordering in or are we having Deb's lasagna that's been defrosting in the fridge all day?"

"Lasagna." Gus made the executive decision without hesitation. "It's better than what they serve at DiPaggio's, Sunny," he said, referring to the best Italian restaurant in Pittsburgh. "Grams makes better Italian food in her kitchen in a 20 year old stove every day. I can't believe they get away with charging 75 bucks a plate for the crap they serve. What a rip-off!"

"Hey, don't knock one of my clients, Sonnyboy, especially since you get to eat there for free," Brian said, grabbing his son by the neck playfully and giving the top of his head a thorough noogie.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me go, Dad, I've got a girlfriend to feed!" Gus grumbled, not at all embarrassed.

Brian let him go laughing. "Listen, guys, are you listening? I've got a bit more paperwork to do, maybe another 30 minutes to an hour. Why don't you pop the food in the oven and by the time it's ready I'll be all yours, promise."

"No problem, Dad. I wanted to take Sunny to the stables first anyway."

"Good, have fun. Don't burn the food."

"Ha, ha. So speaks the guy for whom boiling an egg is a culinary triumph!" Gus joked.

"You want another noogie, Sonnyboy?" Brian asked, amused.

"We're going, we're going. See you in a bit." With a laugh and a wave the couple left the office, put the food in the oven, and went to explore the grounds of Britin.

~*~*~*~

Sunny found the house and the grounds beautiful, but she completely fell in love with the stables and the horses that resided there. They didn't have enough time for a proper ride; so instead, they spoiled the horses by feeding them apples and carrots. Sunny told Gus that up until two years ago she used to ride horses on her grandfather's farm in upstate New York at least once a month and much more often in the summer. Then he suddenly died and the farm, along with the horses, had to be sold, since no one in the family was able take care of it all on a daily basis. Since then, she hadn't ridden at all. Gus told her that anytime she wanted to saddle up, she was welcome.

"Wow, Gus. Thank you!" she said sincerely, then she smiled mischievously and continued, "I better hang onto you then, if I'm going to get my riding fix frequently."

All sorts of images immediately flooded Gus's mind – all of them were featuring Sunny and none of them were featuring her riding a horse. He blushed profusely and painfully bit his own tongue in order to save himself from saying something totally crude. Growing up around Liberty Avenue, the diner, Grandma Deb, his father and their hodgepodge family, Gus was anything but a prude. He had heard of everything there was to know about sex, both gay and straight, since he'd hit puberty and he had never been shy to talk and joke about it with all his friends, or even his previous girlfriends. However, there was something about Rae, or Sunny, as he preferred to call her, that was different, somehow pure (though he knew she wasn't a virgin), that made him hesitate to voice, or even allude to his ridiculously raunchy thoughts.

Sunny noticed his blush and his hesitation to respond. "You are blushing! Gus, are you actually embarrassed? I didn't think that was possible."

Gus had no choice, but to respond to that. "Not embarrassed exactly. My ego's somewhat bruised – here I thought you wanted me for my body, but it turns out it's my father's stables you are really after," he said, pretending to be extremely hurt.

"Well, if I am honest, I'm after both..." she joked, picking up the pretense, "but please don't forget that I also completely respect you for your mind." They laughed and continued to feed the horses.

Thirty minutes later, they came in from the stables frozen to the bone, wet from an impromptu snowball fight that erupted on their way back to the house, deliriously happy and ravenous. When they came in, the lasagna was piping hot and bubbly and the air in the kitchen was perfumed with the scents of tomato, basil and garlic. Gus and Sunny set the table, but before Gus could call his dad, Brian stepped into the kitchen sniffing the mouthwatering aroma appreciatively.

"Perfect timing, as always, Dad! You appear just as all the kitchen work gets done. Since we set the table and cooked the food, the clean-up's all yours."

"I don't fu...think so, Sonnyboy. Mrs. Morris will be here tomorrow," he said of his long-time housekeeper. "So I'll leave it all to her!" he declared with his usual smirk and dug into a steaming plate of cheesy lasagna.

Brian had abandoned his no carbs after 7 pm rule a long time ago. He was still very careful with his diet whenever he was on his own, but when Gus was with him, he indulged in all sorts of "crap" without complaint to make him happy – he ate pizza, pasta, burgers, ice cream together with his kid and enjoyed every single morsel. He just made sure that both of them got a lot of exercise together, and he also spent an extra hour working out, either at home or at the gym. The result was that he was still as lean, fit and muscular as when he was in his early thirties and a lot more content, companionably sharing junk food with his son, rather than living a lonely life of culinary self-denial.

~*~*~*~

The "meet my father" dinner went exceptionally well. Brian liked Rae instantly – she didn't preen or giggle annoyingly and didn't do anything silly that some teenage girls are wont to do. She was open, honest and funny. She had a rich, musical laugh and when she flirted with Gus, she did it with humor and mischief, making him laugh with her, rather than trying to do the eye-lash-batting, hair flipping, cleavage showing routine a couple of his ex-girlfriends tried to do.

She told Brian that she didn't want to move to the Pitts from New York City, especially in her senior year of high school, but with per parents' jobs she didn't have a lot of choice - both of her parents got clinical research gigs at the University of Pittsburgh. In the end, she decided that moving wasn't as big a deal in the grand scheme of things, since college was just around the corner. She impressed Brian with her intelligence and ambition, her clear plans and goals for the future – she wanted to study economics of developing nations and eventually work for The World Bank. In that respect she was very similar to both Brian and Gus, both of whom knew exactly what they wanted by the age of 17 and had a plan in mind of how to achieve their goals.

When Rae slipped out to use the restroom, Brian told Gus point blank that he was glad his taste in women had greatly improved, because his previous girlfriends were of the "high gloss factor, low brain wave" variety and he was getting somewhat concerned. He said that he was glad Gus was dating someone with both brains and beauty for a change.

The evening drew to a close and all three had a good time. Brian extended Rae the invitation to use the stables and told Gus to bring Rae to Britin whenever he felt like it. Before the two teens left, Brian called Gus to the side and whispered: "You got condoms, right, Sonnyboy? Cause if you need..."

"Dad! We've been dating for barely two weeks!" Gus whispered back, outraged.

"You are waiting?" Brian was rather surprised by the idea.

"She isn't a slut, Dad, and neither am I, you know. She's...important. We don't want to jump into bed too soon and fuck it all up. By the way, whenever we do decide to have sex, I am perfectly capable of getting my own condoms. But, thanks, Dad."

"Sure, Sonnyboy. Drive safe."

~*~*~*~

On their drive back to Pittsburgh, Gus and Rae talked about Britin, the horses, the dinner and, of course, his father.

"Why in the world is he single, Gus? He's gorgeous – boy, you lucked out in the genes department – successful, rich, and smart. He can probably have anyone he wants."

"That's the problem," Gus laughed, "he doesn't. When he was young I heard he didn't believe in relationships at all. Now he believes in them, but only for some people - like me, or like my uncle Mike, or like my Grandma Deb. Unfortunately, he believes he himself is one of those people that's not meant to be a part of a couple. That he and relationships just don't mix. He dates around, I'm sure; my Dad is no monk. But he hasn't had an actual boyfriend since I was a little kid."

"It's kind of sad, unless he's happy with the way things are. Do you think he is?"

"I don't know. There are times when I think he is and there are times when I think he isn't; but then, no one is happy 100 percent of the time, right?"

"Right. I liked your Dad, though, so I hope he's happier more often than he's not."

"Your words, God's ears. I sure as hell hope so too."

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